


Such is oft the course of deeds

by shieldmaiden19



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Basically the whole Batfamily, Batman AU, But without the Batman, Found Family, Gen, batfamily, batfamily au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 04:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15525726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldmaiden19/pseuds/shieldmaiden19
Summary: Written for Batfamweek2018 Day 4: AUThe road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings





	Such is oft the course of deeds

We all know the story.

A young boy loses his life to a second of senseless violence. Mother shot, father dead. The future crumbles before it has a chance to begin.

But nothing is permanent. Every action has its opposite, and every road can be traveled. 

What if the father dies and not the mother? What if the mother dies but not the father? What if the butler takes the child to the opera in place of the parents? What if the circus never comes to Gotham?

What if the Waynes take a taxi from the crowded street? What if the headlines the next day scream of another senseless murder in yet another Gotham alley? What if the Waynes continue on with their lives as they always have?

The changes would be small at the start. An already-beloved child revels in his parents’ attention. A corrupt city rolls on in its corruption. 

But as the child grows, the seeds planted begin to take root. A brilliant mind is shrugged aside in favor of laughter and the attention of his friends. It’s not my problem yet, he crows. 

His parents smile and indulge their only son – for what greater gift can they give him than the enjoyment of the present? The father discretely funds the work of an honest officer fighting corruption but rubs elbows on a daily basis with the men the officer is combating. The mother chairs aid committees for the suffering poor of her city but would never deign to share their air.

Soon the roots launch a powerful sapling. 

The circus is in town. 

The parents attend an evening performance that promises wonders like you’ve never seen before. (The son is in his final year of college and doing so well, they tell their friends) 

Ropes snap. 

Blood stains the sawdust.

The circus receives a letter of sympathy and a hefty check but not before a flighty boy vanishes into the night. The air might be foul, but it is free, and it is open to any who can navigate it. 

Corruption intensifies until not receiving bribes is more criminal than giving or receiving one. Corruption intensifies and crime rises. Crime rises and people flock to the opium dens, the dealers, and the loansharks, never to be seen again.

A nobody hunts for opium to ease the pain of her lung rot. A nobody receives opium and cripples herself to get her hands on more. A nobody dies of lung rot and liver failure and leaves a young son to face the world’s cruelest city alone. 

The boy jacks three tires from a mob enforcer’s car and almost gets caught. The money he earns from the tires and the hubcaps gets him through the winter…barely. 

The tree is now in full growth, and no cataclysm can shake its progress.

The son of the city, the privileged prince, continues to dance through life. He takes a world tour knowing when he returns he’ll take up his responsibilities as his father’s son. His parents wave him off, and the city goes on with its life. 

The street rat continues to scrape by meal to meal. He finds he has a talent for picking locks and breaking noses. Between the crews he runs with and his carjacking, he finds himself with more opportunities than he’d thought available to someone like him. 

A shadow crosses the city’s rooftops, and everyone below feels a chill brush their spines. The shadow does not pause for effect. Tonight he has a destination. 

The warehouse he watches is not guarded by goons with guns. It does not need them. Even the city’s most hardened criminals whisper of the vengeful spirit that breaks bone faster than lightning splits the sky, the figure more silent shadow than flesh and bone. The illicit drugs and liquor in the warehouse have no other guardian because they need none else. 

Or they needed none else.

Dawn kisses the city awake, and the shadow and the guardian have fled into shadows so deep even the sun can’t drive them away.

In the day’s light, a young woman’s hair shines like fire. The boldness of her appearance contradicts her seamless movements down the crowded street. To be seen is to be targeted, and to be targeted is to face a fate worse than death. 

Her father’s work makes him a target, and his love for her makes her a weakness. 

She has run from more kidnappers than she can count, and she knows every tunnel, alleyway, and skylight in the city. Her father’s work is too important to be compromised. 

Far, far above her head, the shadow has watched her. Before, his life was being seen. Now his life is seeing. And the fluid young woman below him needs his eyes.

Across the city a boy who has more in common with the wraiths than with human beings packs his bag. The ticking heart of the city is his to study and his to control. 

And besides… he won’t be missed.

Years have strengthened the tree to unassailable power. But it’s roots dip deeper into the quagmire, giving and receiving new choices to the city’s inhabitants.

A little boy steps off a transport, his stuffed cat in one hand and his mother’s hand in the other. He has never met his father. His mother promises they’ll meet soon. 

There are bad people in the world, she whispers, and they will get their just reward. 

They melt into the crowd, hand-in-hand. This city has many with dark hair and darker eyes. It won’t notice two more.

A young woman chafes at her father’s control and sleeps with the son of a rival gang. Her father nearly kills her he is so angy at her defiance. The beating he gives her makes her top five list and leaves her burning to see him destroyed. Three months later, an anonymous package with photographs and financial records is delivered to one of the few honest cops in the city. The evidence is overwhelming, and her father goes away for a decade. 

Her satisfaction lasts only until her belly begins to grow.

The street rat continues to survive, each day a miracle he never thought he’d see. His luck runs out one smoggy night in summer. A smiling enforcer catches him jacking tires and beats him till he is broken almost beyond repair. Blurs of gold and purple are all he remembers before consciousness leaves him. 

(The golden girl, belly round and eyes haggard, sets his bones, stitches his wounds, and does her best to keep his fever down. She doesn’t know that night if he’ll live to see the sunrise.)

He lives to rasp out thank you after thank you and to form an alliance with his savior. They’ll watch each other’s backs, and if the world won’t make a place for them, they’ll burn it down around them.

The unmissed boy – young man by now – is searched for quietly but not effectively. He inhabits the spaces between the roofs and the sewers, the rooms and the alleys, and he watches and he waits. 

No one looks twice at a fresh-faced boy. Everyone assumes he’s someone else’s. 

He hides a fire-haired young woman from hitmen out for her blood, and he stops believing in coincidence. The two melt into the in-between spaces, combining their knowledge and filling her father’s records with more and more evidence for his case.

The shadow sees and begins his own fishing. There are places open to him (the air, for example), that no man would ever dream to inhabit. Documents go missing. Ledgers vanish into thin air. Recordings are copied then destroyed. With the guardian by his side, caches of blackmail material are spirited into the city’s shadows.

(When the unmissed and the redhead find boxes of blackmail stacked neatly in their safehouse, they know they have a friend.)

(They trade the blackmail for brownies and the case files for chocolate.)

The little boy is having the time of his life. He gets to spend every day with mama (who calls him habibi when he’s sad or scared), he learns new words every day (English feels strange on his tongue, but he’s learning it quickly, mama says), and three times a day he gets to train (once with knives, once with a staff, and once with only his hands and body).

Every day they add to the map on their biggest wall. Timetables, roster rotations, and schedule upon schedule informs the bad people’s normal routes (one color string for each day and pink for the unscheduled ex-cur-shuns).

His mama, he thinks, is the prettiest, bestest person in the world. 

The rooftop shadows continue their twice-weekly drop-offs, but the redhead and her partner include a note in their latest care package. You’re welcome to stay if you want.

The shadow reads and understands.

(He’s missed having a family)

The guardian would welcome the invitation if she were with the shadow to make the pickup. But she is blocks and blocks away, immersed in the steel and concrete jungle she normally ghosts above. More than one enforcer has mentioned the Alley Hoods in their once-private conversations – arsonists, thieves, and general disrupters of business sporting hoods of various colors – and the guardian knows now to follow the tugging in her gut. It usually leads to caches of evidence their allies shout excitedly over.

From the height of a fire escape, she watches three teens handily beat a group of thugs two times their size (three times in the case of the purple hood) but neglect to post a lookout of their own. Reinforcements are around the corner, and yellow hood is clutching his side (fractured, maybe broken rib, she thinks). 

So much for not being involved.

The guardian twists, flips, and careens her way down to the alley, landing squarely between the teens and the advancing thugs. She hears the hoods react but she’s already plunging in. Common street fighters are nothing to her training, much less with the acrobatic maneuvers the shadow has been teaching her. Before long, they’re unconscious, tied, and gagged, and she can rest.

The guardian turns to see three gobsmacked teens (gobsmacked was a word the shadow laughed when saying, and that made it magic in her eyes) - one tall, tanned boy in red, one wiry golden-haired girl in purple, and one stocky, dark-skinned boy in yellow. She has a moment of silence before they all start talking at once.

She has only to hold up a hand and they stop, but she can tell it’s only temporary. She gestures to them to follow through a grate (they could never follow into her normal world – not yet at least). They comply, and she closes the grate behind them, leaving no sign of their ever having been present.

(She knows the word family but doesn’t know it yet. She’s excited to learn.)

When she enters their nest, the shadow just raises an eyebrow. This probably wasn’t the redhead’s intention.

(They’re taking her up on it anyway) 

The tree is unassailable now, and what future that had existed before is obliterated in the rolling momentum of the present. 

The city’s prince returned long ago from his world tour, tanned and more chiseled than ever before. His father begins introducing him to his business contacts, and his mother requires his presence at her ‘little get-togethers.’ He is their heir, their only child, and he wants for nothing as he has all his life.

The redhead expects many things, but harboring three vigilantes, two cat burglars, and one of the most valuable heirs of the city is not one of them. No matter. They’re all here for the same reason she is – to reclaim the only home they’ve ever known.

The first night is interesting. Every mattress is taken, the room shuffled and rearranged until everyone has a section of the wall to their back.

The distrust is palpable. 

It takes time – and a lot of taking real or hypothetical bullets for each other – before they begin to assimilate. 

And when they do, well. The city would do best to listen. 

The fiery woman’s case file grows by the day. The Hoods strike more frequently and fade away more completely. And a statuesque woman and her young son begin a countdown of days.

The boy asks his mama why they’re doing all this pre-par-a-shun if they haven’t talked to his papa yet. She stills and closes her eyes. We expect the best of people, habibi, she explains, but we plan for the worst. I know what I want your papa to say, but that means nothing to all the things he could do. Do you understand?

He doesn’t, but he nods and goes back to his coloring. 

A letter arrives at the prince’s home the next morning. It says his son is in the city and implores the prince to meet with him for an hour. It is signed with a name that rings a bell but he can’t place.

In the broken shadowland of the city, federal agents prepare to spring the trap the teens have set. Between the shadow, the guardian, and the Hoods, messages fly between the redhead, her father, and the biggest anti-corruption taskforce in the city’s history. 

No names are exchanged. Nothing but evidence and coded questions is passed. The pincer begins to close.

The woman and her son arrive at the wrought iron gate. She says they are expected. The ancient butler, bound now by duty more than devotion, leads her to the first of the family’s sitting rooms. 

The parents and the prince do not rise. The prince’s eyes widen at the woman and his face pales at the child in her arms. Talia, I— he begins.

Did not expect to see me? Did not remember my name? she answers flatly.

I—he stammers, his world shaken at its foundation. Can we have a moment? he asks his parents.

They rise to leave. The mother’s face is frosty and the father’s eyes are sad. The butler leads the boy away with a hand to his back and a gentle promise of tea and biscuits. Behind them the close of the door echoes achingly.

The woman sinks to the edge of a chair, graceful till the end, and meets the prince’s eyes. 

You never met my father, she begins. He is a cold man, harsh when he must be. His mission comes above all else, and he expects the same of me. But now he wants my son.

She takes a breath with only a hint of a shudder. Our son.

I never thought I could or even would defy my father, she states, but for Damian I will try anything. So my love, please take him. I can live with a thousand crimes upon my head but not with the death of my son on my conscience. Please, my love. For me.

The prince takes a shuddering breath and buries his face in his hands. Talia, I—I never—You, you have to understand—

Understand what?

That it’s not that simple. 

The woman’s last shred of faith goes out like a candle on its last breath. 

The prince continues, It wouldn’t work for us to take him in. He’s too old, and he’s not—

Snow white? she finishes. Caucasian? Be blunt with me, beloved. I know I am not of your vaunted world and neither is the son we made together. Does that really make so much of a difference?

Not for my parents, he stammers, a-and definitely not for me. Just…everyone else.

Everyone else, she repeats, her voice dangerously low.

Yes, everyone else! he snaps. I don’t live in a vacuum, Talia. We have people watching us from all over the nation, all over the world, and we couldn’t take him in without me marrying you too. I have obligations to this city and to my name, and all the good I’ve done would be a footnote compared to the scandal of making an illegitimate son halfway across the world. Nobody would believe us.

God, Talia, if you’d come to me as soon as you knew, he scolds, if only you’d come to me as soon as you knew. I could have helped you, I could have given you money—

For what, Bruce? For what? she hisses, hair loose and all restraint gone. An abortion? Throw money at a problem and it goes away? Because that’s how you see me and my son? Problems? 

She grabs his face in her hands. He is a child, Bruce. He is worth more than anything we were raised to value. If you have one shred of compassion, Bruce, one drop of remorse; if you ever felt something for me, please take our son from me!

His eyes are wide. I’ll—I need to speak to my parents.

She releases him, leaving throbbing scratches on his face. Her eyes are flinty. No need, beloved. If you have no courage for what must be done, then no more will they. 

She sweeps from the sitting room and down to the kitchen, as sure of the path as if she had walked it a hundred times. Habibi, she declares coldly, we are leaving.

The boy, never having seen his mother so furious, only nods, clinging to her neck as they sweep away. 

(He takes the bag of cookies the butler slipped him when his mother entered)

Mistress Talia, the elderly butler interjects, gliding along in the wake of the mother’s tempest, There is one thing I want you to know. 

Something in his voice slows her down.

I serve the Waynes, the butler continues, no matter the color of their skin or the circumstances of their birth. Anyone with eyes to see knows your son is a Wayne. Please allow me to help you in whatever way I can.

When she does not answer immediately, eyes promising pain to those who wronged her, his face grows stern (even though his expression never moves). 

He chides, I will not be party to any shedding of blood, Mistress Talia, so please reconsider whatever plans you have set in place.

There will be no blood, she clarifies sharply. Only just returns to unjust actions.

At the butler’s grave compassion, she steels herself, admitting for a breath the fear she feels. Her voice is quiet when she concedes, I would welcome your help.

He inclines his head. The door is closed and that is that.

Federal agents come at dawn for what seem to be half of the city’s politicians, a third of her businessmen, and all of her crimelords. Everyone who’d exchanged power for profit feels cold steel on their wrists and foul air on their necks.

The architects of the sting have long since disappeared, melting into the rafters of the world, lit from beneath by the undying city. The future is now theirs for the taking.

Across the city, the parents and the prince breathe a sigh of relief. They have escaped being named in the indictment, and the ‘other matter’ has disappeared from all sight and knowledge. Their family name is intact.

The woman they feared mails the bulk of her research to a reporter outside the city – a fierce, truth-seeking woman with a scathing pen – and sets to work with a woman who prowls as much as she walks. 

Every legacy can be unraveled. Every fortune can be unmade.

Prosecutors open their files the next morning to see new documents – professional surveillance notes, conversation transcripts, and pages and pages of accounting. 

The evidence is damning. 

Officers visit the family’s home, and the reporter breaks the story.

The ruling family, the city’s shining light, plummet into the abyss they never worked to fill. Their money is found in kingpins’ bank accounts and fixers’ wallets, and their fortune crumbles to so much sparkly dust.

But a thousand here, a thousand there cannot be accounted for, and prosecutors are already swamped. They already have whole nets of fish to fry. Maybe, they say, we’ll track that money when all this quiets down.

(It never does)

And one old man slips between the seams of the city, missed amidst the clamor and the chaos. He is dressed simply, despite his accent, and he walks with no hurry. He bears a suitcase and an umbrella (as a proper gentleman does), and a smile shines out behind his moustache. A legacy is not lost yet. 

This is the beginning of something great.

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe our cities, our Gothams, will never be free of corruption, violence, and abuses of power. This fic is my hope that one day they will be.


End file.
